Cramulus's D&D Game

[Cain]

I hate to ask, but...How many unsuccessful assassinations?

Wasn't recorded, as far as I could see.  The Council preferred to work on a bounty system, rather than set targets, so the records only indicate the successes.

[Cramulus]

random: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20

[Don Coyote]

random: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20

OMFG


MASTERWORK HONEY BEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Incidentally, I decided that a katana should be 1d8 18-20/x2 and the 'falchion' should be 1d10 18-20/x2 back when 3rd ed came out.

[Cain]

random: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20

That hit full on awesome by the time it got to duct tape.

[Suu]

I'm convinced I'm just not nerdy enough for DnD. I'm struggling enough with the 3rd ed game I'm in.

[Cramulus]

I found that link because I was looking for homebrew katana rules

this one guy really wanted to be a rouge with a katana. I told him he should just take Exotic Weapon Prof: Bastard Sword, and we'll treat bastard swords as if they've always been katanas, and he looked somewhat disappointed. So I said I'd look around and maybe houserule something.

And I found literally page upon page of the same kind of fanwank you see at that link. No joke, the top 5 hits I found were all variations on some kid saying that if you plant your feet right, a katana should be able to cut through an armored horse and knight who are charging at you.

After reading the 1d4chan post I decided that he's getting a katanaesque bastard sword.

[Cain]

I think we should scientifically test this hypothesis, just to be sure.

The kid who thinks the katana is a Magic Super Slicer gets to be the one holding it as the knight charges.  But to be fair, the knight is allowed a lance and longsword as well.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I haven't played 4th edition at higher levels, but I've DM'd 3.5 campaigns from level 1-21. And I do have to say that 3rd edition gets very wonky past level 14ish. The CR system breaks down and requires a skilled DM to construct challenging but sane encounters.

Yeah, that's a good point.  It requires time and effort to make an EL16 encounter that isn't autodeath or a cakewalk.  But it can be done, and it lets me vent the nastier parts of my brain.  IF you have the time to do it, I think it's actually quite rewarding.

On the other hand, it can be silly.  Not long ago, I created a CR4 chicken just for cheap kicks.  If I actually kill a player with it, I shall webcam my TPK Victory Dance and post it on Youtube.

As a DM, I'd often find myself in situations where I'd written a long challenging dungeon, and the players figured out that they can just scry the location of the treasure, teleport there, grab the thing, and then teleport out, solving the entire dungeon in a mere 3 rounds. I liked that the game allowed this kind of ingenuity, but it often resulted in this weird narrative arms race where the winner was the one who had the larger portion of the rulebook memorized.  

Oh, there's ways of dealing with that.  Forbiddance, dimensional anchor, environment, etc.  Or simply nondetection (A favorite of mine...If you're the big scary lich, are you REALLY going to let people scry your favorite toys?  Would you as a player?).

[Don Coyote]

I found that link because I was looking for homebrew katana rules

this one guy really wanted to be a rouge with a katana. I told him he should just take Exotic Weapon Prof: Bastard Sword, and we'll treat bastard swords as if they've always been katanas, and he looked somewhat disappointed. So I said I'd look around and maybe houserule something.

And I found literally page upon page of the same kind of fanwank you see at that link. No joke, the top 5 hits I found were all variations on some kid saying that if you plant your feet right, a katana should be able to cut through an armored horse and knight who are charging at you.

After reading the 1d4chan post I decided that he's getting a katanaesque bastard sword.

Treat it as bastard scimitar, if scimitars have different stats from longswords in 4th.

[Cain]

As a DM, I'd often find myself in situations where I'd written a long challenging dungeon, and the players figured out that they can just scry the location of the treasure, teleport there, grab the thing, and then teleport out, solving the entire dungeon in a mere 3 rounds. I liked that the game allowed this kind of ingenuity, but it often resulted in this weird narrative arms race where the winner was the one who had the larger portion of the rulebook memorized.  

Oh, there's ways of dealing with that.  Forbiddance, dimensional anchor, environment, etc.  Or simply nondetection (A favorite of mine...If you're the big scary lich, are you REALLY going to let people scry your favorite toys?  Would you as a player?).

This.  I know from playing some of the more tactical mod installations of Baldurs Gate II, allowing enemies to think like players makes even the simplest encounters much more deadly.  I think there is less obvious ways of cheesing in 3rd and 4th edition than 2nd edition (Immunity to Magic Weapons, Stoneskin, Immunity: Divination or Abjuration, Improved Invisibility, Mirror Image, Fireshield Red and Blue, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Minor Spell Sequencer, Chain Contingency, Improved Alaracity etc), but I'm sure half an hour with a spell list and some imagination could make it much more difficult for the players without it being impossible.

[Richter]

As a DM, I'd often find myself in situations where I'd written a long challenging dungeon, and the players figured out that they can just scry the location of the treasure, teleport there, grab the thing, and then teleport out, solving the entire dungeon in a mere 3 rounds. I liked that the game allowed this kind of ingenuity, but it often resulted in this weird narrative arms race where the winner was the one who had the larger portion of the rulebook memorized.  

Oh, there's ways of dealing with that.  Forbiddance, dimensional anchor, environment, etc.  Or simply nondetection (A favorite of mine...If you're the big scary lich, are you REALLY going to let people scry your favorite toys?  Would you as a player?).

I've been trying to feel out this balance with stuff I'm working up right now.  As much as I want they players to go through what I've layed out, fight interesting stuff and find cool shit, I don't want to railroad them into it.  

Accepting that PC's may spend 30 minutes poking at a funny looking chair, then COMPLETELY miss somethign else in another room I put a lot of thought into is one things I'll have to deal with here.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

As a DM, I'd often find myself in situations where I'd written a long challenging dungeon, and the players figured out that they can just scry the location of the treasure, teleport there, grab the thing, and then teleport out, solving the entire dungeon in a mere 3 rounds. I liked that the game allowed this kind of ingenuity, but it often resulted in this weird narrative arms race where the winner was the one who had the larger portion of the rulebook memorized.  

Oh, there's ways of dealing with that.  Forbiddance, dimensional anchor, environment, etc.  Or simply nondetection (A favorite of mine...If you're the big scary lich, are you REALLY going to let people scry your favorite toys?  Would you as a player?).

I've been trying to feel out this balance with stuff I'm working up right now.  As much as I want they players to go through what I've layed out, fight interesting stuff and find cool shit, I don't want to railroad them into it.  

Accepting that PC's may spend 30 minutes poking at a funny looking chair, then COMPLETELY miss somethign else in another room I put a lot of thought into is one things I'll have to deal with here.

Well, there's two approaches:  Plot wagon and plot hammer.  I can elaborate, if you like.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

He's formed an opinion of D&D 4th edition as being like an MMO, and being bereft of roleplay.

Isn't that statement kind of redundant?

[Epimetheus]

Sounds awesome, Cram. I'll DEFINITELY be trying Obsidian Portal for the shit I'm trying to organize.

[Cramulus]

As a DM, I'd often find myself in situations where I'd written a long challenging dungeon, and the players figured out that they can just scry the location of the treasure, teleport there, grab the thing, and then teleport out, solving the entire dungeon in a mere 3 rounds. I liked that the game allowed this kind of ingenuity, but it often resulted in this weird narrative arms race where the winner was the one who had the larger portion of the rulebook memorized.  

Oh, there's ways of dealing with that.  Forbiddance, dimensional anchor, environment, etc.  Or simply nondetection (A favorite of mine...If you're the big scary lich, are you REALLY going to let people scry your favorite toys?  Would you as a player?).

This.  I know from playing some of the more tactical mod installations of Baldurs Gate II, allowing enemies to think like players makes even the simplest encounters much more deadly.  I think there is less obvious ways of cheesing in 3rd and 4th edition than 2nd edition (Immunity to Magic Weapons, Stoneskin, Immunity: Divination or Abjuration, Improved Invisibility, Mirror Image, Fireshield Red and Blue, Minor Globe of Invulnerability, Minor Spell Sequencer, Chain Contingency, Improved Alaracity etc), but I'm sure half an hour with a spell list and some imagination could make it much more difficult for the players without it being impossible.

in the last long-running campaign I ran, this was a major problem for the players - their enemy was a sorcerer who used to be on their side, so he knew all about their plans, and he still had spies in their city. They thought he was a conjurer, but it turns out he was an illusionist. A number of their encounters with him were baffling to them until they figured out that he was summoning illusionary monsters and altering the terrain with illusions, not evocation. That NPC had a lot of tricks, I tried to play him very intelligently, and it kept them on their toes.

In one encounter, they were fighting him in the middle of this lava pit. And the players had to spend all this prep getting ready to fight while waist deep in lava, making sure he didn't gust of wind them off their flying carpet, that kind of stuff. And it turns out that the enemy was actually just invisible, flying about 20 feet above the lava in the corner, and he was making them fight illusionary versions of himself. They'd capture him and it'd turn out he was a simulacrum.

The party had an imp which had been following them around since a level 1 dungeon. And there was a period of time that they didn't see the imp, during that time, he was actually becoming the illusionist's familiar. So fast forward to level 14, the part was getting ready to go kick the illusionist's ass, but they knew they were getting scried on - so they'd only discuss THE PLAN while they were cloaked in nondetection dust, but of course the imp would just come ask if he could sit in on the conversation too. They'd oblige, and he'd report everything to his boss. At the end of the campaign when they found out Malzizipox had been betraying them all along, they flipped out! It was one of those twists which made perfect sense in hindsight; I had been dropping clues left and right that they just hadn't recognized.

Once they had figured out that Mogadore was an illusionist, they were able to prepare themselves using better divinations and detection spells. It was a good boss fight because they totally would have lost if not for that clue.

The campaign climax involved a fight against a great wyrm red dragon on the astral plane. (The dragon's name was Tia Poxa Kor, or TPK for short) (TPK is nerd slang for "total party kill", an intimidating thing to name your end boss) It's nuts, because in 3rd ed, on the astral plane, anybody can fly, and anybody can cast one spell per round as a free action. Dragons are essentially 20th level sorcerers in addition to firebreathing beasts, and on the astral plane the dragon doesn't have to choose between breathing fire or casting a limited wish. So it was a super weird fight, everybody was casting 2 high level spells per round. Half of the PCs had the leadership feat, so they had mid level cohorts and dozens of low level followers in the fight with them, all of which ate fire in round two, turning up the fight's emotional intensity by several notches. Eventually they capped the dragon, not through damage, but by hitting it with 15 negative levels, imposing a rough -15 to all the dragon's rolls and reducing him to a level 6 or 7 spellcaster.